Motivational Quotes

Humor

The comic and the tragic lie inseparably close, like light and shadow.

- Socrates

Best Quotes about Humor

Never say a humorous thing to a man who does not possess humor. He will always use it in evidence against you.

Tree, Sir Herbert Beerbohm

A joke was not a single-use item but something you brought out again and again until it fell apart in your hand like a cheap umbrella.

David Nicholls

The right honorable gentlemen is indebted to his memory for his jokes and his imagination for his facts.

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it.

Hughes, Langston

Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away and a sunny spirit takes their place.

Mark Twain

They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure.

Hemingway, Ernest

I could not tread these perilous paths in safety, if I did not keep a saving sense of humor.

Nelson, Lord

Humor is everywhere, in that there's irony in just about anything a human does.

Bill Nye

10.

The comic and the tragic lie inseparably close, like light and shadow.

Socrates

11.

Good humor isn't a trait of character, it is an art which requires practice.

Seabury, David

12.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Peter Ustinov

13.

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

14.

The only rules comedy can tolerate are those of taste, and the only limitations those of libel.

James Thurber

15.

Chaos in the midst of chaos isn't funny, but chaos in the midst of order is.

Martin, Steve

16.

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs-jolted by every pebble in the road.

Beecher, Henry Ward

17.

There are things of deadly earnest that can only be mentioned under the cover of a joke.

Procter, J. J.

18.

Humor is always based on a modicum of truth. Have you ever heard a joke about a father-in-law?

Dick Clark

19.

One never needs their humor as much as when they argue with a fool.

Proverb, Chinese

20.

Any man who has had the job I've had and didn't have a sense of humor wouldn't still be here.

Truman, Harry S

21.

People of humor are always in some degree people of genius.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

22.

If you're at school and you're not that bright or good-looking or popular or whatever, and one day you say something and someone laughs, well, you sort of grab onto it, don't you? you think, well I run funny and I've got this stupid big face and big thighs and no-one fancies me, but at least I can make people laugh. And It's such a nice feeling, making someone laugh, that maybe you get a bit reliant on it. Like, if you're not funny then you're not... anything.

David Nicholls

23.

Humor is always based on a modicum of truth. Have you ever heard a joke about a father-in-law.

Clark, Dick

24.

Any discussion of the problems of being funny in America will not make sense unless we substitute the word wit for humor. Humor inspires sympathetic good-natured laughter and is favored by the healing-power gang. Wit goes for the jugular, not the jocular, and it's the opposite of football; instead of building character, it tears it down.

King, Florence

25.

A caricature is putting the face of a joke on the body of a truth.

Conrad, Joseph

26.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

27.

Burt Reynolds once asked me out. I was in his room.

Diller, Phyllis

28.

True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.

Carlyle, Thomas

29.

Humor is a whisper from the soul, imploring mind and body to relax, let go and be at peace again.

30.

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

Robert Benchley

31.

There is always some frivolity in excellent minds; they have wings to rise, but also stray.

Joubert, Joseph

32.

For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.

Sterne, Laurence

33.

Humor -- the perfect relationship of the parts to the whole.

34.

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

Sondheim, Stephen

35.

Humor is something that thrives between man's aspirations and his limitations. There is more logic in humor than in anything else. Because, you see, humor is truth.

Borge, Victor

36.

A joke is an epigram on the death of a feeling.

Fredrich

37.

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

38.

I used to think that everything was just being funny but now I don't know. I mean, how can you tell?

Warhol, Andy

39.

All my humor is based upon destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I'd be standing on the breadline right in back of J. Edgar Hoover.

Bruce, Lenny

40.

Humor is a rubber sword - it allows you to make a point without drawing blood.

Mary Hirsch

41.

Be simple in words, manners, and gestures. Amuse as well as instruct. If you can make a man laugh, you can make him think and make him like and believe you.

Smith, Alfred E.

42.

Probably it is impossible for humor to be ever a revolutionary weapon. Candide can do little more than generate irony.

Trilling, Lionel

43.

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

44.

One should never risk a joke, even of the mildest and most unexceptional charters, except among people of culture and wit.

La Bruyere, Jean De

45.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.